


Time is muscle

by daylight_angel



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Abbey-centric, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, F/M, Heart Attacks, M/M, Multi, OT3, OT3 if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 02:31:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4504269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daylight_angel/pseuds/daylight_angel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abbey Bartlet saves lives, stops death in it's tracks. It’s second nature, like breathing, like professional politics. Practicing medicine is her own small act of God, of performing miracles. In our universe, she couldn’t save Leo from destiny, from the slow tick tock, tick tock, tick- stop of his heartbeat.</p>
<p>but in another...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time is muscle

**Author's Note:**

> I AM NOT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL. IDK if what I wrote could actually save Leo, but I refuse to believe Abbey just completely missed all those signs.  
> I didn't have a beta for this, I apologize for any mistakes, they are my own. The threesome here is kinda subdued, but it's there, I promise!

Abbey Bartlet saves lives, stops fate. It’s second nature, like breathing, like politics. Practicing medicine is her own small act of God, of performing miracles. In our universe, she couldn’t save Leo from destiny, from the slow tick tock, tick tock, tick- stop of his heartbeat.

 

but...

 

In another universe, after Leo and Jed argued about bombing the Palestinians, after yelling things about wars, about legacies, after egos were insulted and testerone increased, Abbey went to Leo’s study. It was the place he went when he and Jed needed to be apart. (Leo’s apartment in the city has been an empty room virtually since he bought it). Abbey knocked on the door and let Leo rant the way she let Jed quietly talk, about wars and legacy, and whether the Celtics would win. She noticed, as another Abbey did not, the heavy way he breathed, his face too flush with anger. 

 

Abbey stood behind Leo as the President whisper-yelled instructions and go orders, noticed the way Leo went stiff when he spoke to Jed, the way her husband brushed off his concerns. She saw the slump of his shoulders when Jed turned and did not look back, and brushed a hand across his cheek when she passed him. He jumped when she did. 

“You aren’t coming?” she yelled over the roar of the choppers. He shook his head, his eyes sad. Another person would have missed it, the sadness, the way his breathing was fast and irregular, but she was not another person. Abbey noted these signs, in the back of her mind, noted the way Leo’s eyes flitted up to the chopper as he replied, the raspy pause when he took a breath. When she sat next to her husband on that helicopter, she saw how he wouldn’t look out, how pointed his avoidance to look at his chief of staff was. Leo’s words echo in her head as the chopper left the ground. 

“He wants me here.” he had said. Not needs, wants. 

 

C.J. called her, the second day, to complain about the media coverage, but she heard the worried tone of her voice when she asked about Leo.

 

Josh pulled her aside when he got up to Camp David, when he got a free moment, to update her on Donna, but he turned back to her after he started to leave.

 

“..ma’am? Do you know if something…happened with Leo and the President?” She shakes her head, slow and steady. His worried expression likely mirrors her own. “Okay, yeah. Will you watch out for him, when he gets here? Just in case?” She nods in affirmation, and he walks away.

 

“I'll always watch” she whispers, when she’s sure he can’t hear.

 

“Jed?” Abbey asks as Josh Lyman walks away after the basketball game/planning meeting. He looks at her, waiting for her question. “Where’s Leo?” She can’t tell if he was expecting that question or not, but Leo shows up at Camp David later that day.

 

She’s reminded of that fight she and Jed had, during the early days of the campaign, the way the staff danced around her and the President, the way they dance around Jed and Leo now. The thought does not comfort her.

 

When she sees him for the first time in a couple days his face is grey, and he’s wearing a suit that is too big around his middle. He acts like he didn’t even notice when she asks about it. 

 

Something is wrong. 

 

 

Her husband won’t talk about it. Leo won’t talk about it and they keep avoiding the subject of the peace talks, of the argument, even each other. The staff is worried. Hell, she’s worried, and Toby tells her that Leo took an antacid that morning. Josh keeps making nervous eye contact with her across the yard when he sees her. 

 

She hears Jed and Leo arguing in front of one of the cabins after lunch. Jed swears at him, brushes it off with a laugh. It wasn’t a joke, and judging by the look on Leo’s face it wasn’t funny either.

 

She keeps seeing Leo alone, on the outer edge of conversations with the staff, always arriving too late to really contribute, keeps seeing the way Jed turns away from him. Josh tells her later that the President tried to hold the talks together alone when he really should have Leo with him, that Leo distanced himself from conversations. Abbey wants to scream when she hears that, at herself as well as her husband.

 

Leo is at the far end of the room when she’s finally near him, and leaves too quick for her to notice something wrong. She stays and comforts Jed. She thought that, they were as they should be, together the three of them. She thought that their fight would blow over. 

 

He’s late, to the meeting Kate calls. She never even looks at him.

 

She never even looks at him. She kicks herself for that later.

 

In one universe, in our universe, she’s in bed by the time Jed and Leo have that fight, the one where Leo resigns, and Jed lets him.

 

Abbey Bartlet leaves without ever suspecting that she’d failed the man she held responsible for her husband when she couldn’t be. 

 

But...

 

In another, as Josh leaves to go back inside, she walks into the room, bothered by something she didn’t quite see.

 

She hears the fight from Josh’s point of view, remembers Leo’s ashen face, the too big suit, the antacid. Remembers the way his breathing spiked, fast and irregular, mouth open like a fish, the last time she had talked to him.

 

She’s running down the trail with three secret service agents when she hears the screams. Her blood runs cold, as those screams get hoarser, quieter. She’s still so far away from him, she still doesn’t know where he is. Leo screams grow quieter and quieter as she fights to get to him.

 

 

 

It’s nearly six hours difference, between one universe and the other. Abbey is just as mad at herself in each of them. She failed one of her best friends in both of them. But six hours difference? Time is muscle, and Leo needed every second she could give him.

 

CJ still becomes the new Chief of Staff. Leo still retires, they still crack his chest open and restart his heart. Jed still blames himself. (Jed always blames himself when it’s too late to do anything about it.) Mallory and the Bartlett’s still had to talk about “options” after his heart wouldn’t beat on it’s own. Abbey still tells Jed to to fire Leo to save him. Leo is still the one who convinces him to do it. The second heart attack still ends his campaign as vice president.

 

But…

 

He spent three and a half hours on the pump, not five. His heart started beating on it’s own much sooner. Abbey doesn’t let Leo seclude himself in recovery, or to work harder then he should. Leo has the best doctor this side of the atlantic by his side as often as she is by the President. Mallory and Zoey team up on the Santos/McGarry campaign, assign themselves stress watchers, symptom checkers. He isn’t alone when history repeats itself. The second heart attack doesn’t end his life. 

 

Time is muscle. six hours is a lot of muscle. Abbey wants Leo to have a lot more muscle.  

 

“he’s my best friend” Jed says to Abbey in the hospital, before Leo’s heart restarted. 

 

“he’s a hell of a lot more then that.” she spits right back.

 

In one universe Leo sends the president a gift from beyond the grave.

 

In this one he’s there to hand it to him himself. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is welcomed, thanks for reading!


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